Langston and Brown soon went out of contention in the Nationals with knee injuries, which left Reed and Stewart to battle outdoors. Stewart had a bad race at High Point due to his own knee problem, and Reed took the overall, but then Reed crashed and busted his shoulder at Southwick. Stewart soon got on a roll, winning Budds Creek, RedBud, and Kenworthy’s. By the time the series reached Unadilla, Stewart had a big points lead and was establishing some dominance. Somewhere along the way, though, Reed commented that he needed to just start with Stewart to battle with him.

Stewart, apparently, disagreed.

So in the first Unadilla moto, Stewart quickly jumped to the front again, while Reed had to clear Eric Sorby to take over second. Then Stewart, oddly, started slowing, and Reed started to close the gap.

“Yeah, he was doing 2:14s earlier and Bubba’s doing 2:17s now, so obviously he’s slowing down for something,” said Stewart’s mechanic Jeremy Albrecht to ESPN pit reporter Cameron Steele. “I can’t really tell why. I don’t know if he has arm pump or something.”

Stewart kept slowing and Reed kept closing, and then Stewart practically waved Reed into the lead on the landing of Unadilla’s Gravity Cavity jump. A few turns later, Stewart wicked it back up, closed to Reed’s fender, then repassed him and took off with the lead again.

Stewart had purposely let Reed catch him, just so he could repass him and prove he was faster.

“Chad Reed must be like ‘What the…?’”, said ESPN color commentator David Bailey. Stewart made his point, pulled back away from Reed to win by a comfortable margin.

“Stewart’s just saying ‘Go ahead. Go ahead,’” continued Bailey. “You’re bad? All I keep hearing about is how you’re going to beat me if you get the start. They’re way ahead of third right now, maybe Stewart is saying ‘Go ahead, we’ll see.’ That can be looked at as cocky or condescending, but you know what? It’s racing. It’s a war.”

“I’ve been getting really good starts and everyone has been saying that Chad Reed can beat me straight up and I just wanted to prove to everybody that he can’t do it,” said Stewart. “I was having a good time out there!”

It was a remarkable display of confidence from Stewart, especially considering he was still a rookie. It was such a victory from a mental standpoint that many predicted it would be the last word on a Stewart/Reed rivalry. “If he pulls away and he beats him and he wins this moto, Reed will never beat Stewart again,” Bailey said.

Bailey, and the rest of the world, wasn’t aware yet that Reed was one of the proudest and most stubborn athletes to ever rider a dirt bike. In fact, somehow in his post-moto interview, Reed managed to perform his usual mental gymnastics and still blame getting stuck behind Sorby at the start.

“We were running about the same lap times,” Reed said of he and Stewart, just moments after being passed and dropped.

Reed’s stubbornness would pay off, though. The next weekend the series visited Millville, Minnesota, and Reed beat Stewart straight up in the first moto. Reed had taken his beating, but just when it seemed like Stewart finally had broken him, he found a way to scratch out a win. Stewart won moto two for the overall, but Reed proved he could take a punch and come back swinging.

Thus Unadilla started the longest-running rivalry in the history of the sport. Fifteen years later, we’re still not sure if we’ve seen the last of it!